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Three teens featured in a 1961 Life magazine article thrust California surfing life into the spotlight, a seemingly carefree existence of surf, sand, and sun. But as Sheila Weller explores in Vanity Fair, there were darker undertones floating underneath the Malibu surfing scene, an "underground saga" that often masked the unhappy home lives of those who drifted toward it. At the center of her story—and the subjects of the Life photo spread—were Mike Nader, Duane King, and Larry Shaw, three 16-year-olds who came from broken homes filled with abuse, alcoholism, and neglect, seeking refuge and comfort in the warm Southern California waters and under the wing of legendary "surfing hedonist" Miki Dora. Weller explains how the charismatic Dora, whom Nader called "the Cary Grant of surfers," enraptured the so-called "lost boys" with his equal parts masculinity and femininity.

But under Miki's mystique was a small-town scammer who became angry when the movie Gidget put surfing on the map—sending crowds of newbies to the shore to ruin his paradise. The boys became part of Dora's "brazen, swashbuckling counter-narrative," immersed not only in petty theft, but also in the heady world of girl surfers, who "materialized through the ocean glare like Valkyries rising from fjords." Even Jim Morrison of the Doors showed up on the scene for a time. The landscape grew increasingly darker as the '60s progressed, replete with hard drugs and Dora himself eventually earning jail time for his dabblings in check and credit card fraud. To the lost boys, though, Dora would always be the one who offered them shelter from "the jaws of family pain" in a "Technicolor dream of wet and wild and rebellious adventure." More on their story here. (Why the Amazon's best waves are now gone.)

I can only think of the Gidget, Moon Doggie and Sandra Dee. Troy Donuhue was retarded or autistic wasn't he?

LoLzS

May 10, 2017 4:42 PM CDT

There is light & dark with every life & the story that goes with it. It all depends on how much of each we allow into our lives. Some of us consume light, others the darkness. Most of us just live life not realizing we see-saw 50/50 between the 2. Usually our significant other brings out the stronger side. For better or worse. That & things that trigger "TRUE" emotions.

Ezekiel 25:17

May 10, 2017 12:42 PM CDT

The best surfer movie has to be, "Endless Summer." We ordered it up for my college film club and showed it in Mecham Auditorium at OU. It was these boys who traveled all over the world to get the perfect surf. Kind of a Point Break without the bank robberies. You get to observe some pre-revolution apartheid in South Africa and unspoiled beaches of places like southern California. One of my favorite parts is when they surf the east side of the cape of Africa. The wind is from the southeast and blows up the coast. So that drives the waves perpendicular to the shore. So you can feasibly catch a wave and ride it to the point where you are exhausted. You can surely ride a wave so far that you cannot possibly make it back to your VW wagon without someone giving you a ride back.